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John Adams (1947- ) Works in a minimalist style, though he is less rigid in his application of minimalism than some earlier composers such as Phillip Glass or Steve Reich. As you read the section entitled “Musical Style,” pay special attention to his feelings about twelve-tone composition and the influence of John Cage.
Adam’s works include Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986), On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), a choral piece commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003), and Shaker Loops (1978), a minimalist four-movement work for strings. His operas include Nixon in China (1987), which recounts Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, and Doctor Atomic (2005), which covers Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the building of the first atomic bomb.
Figure 1. John Adams
He also wrote The Death of Klinghoffer is an opera for which he wrote the music, based on the hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro by the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985, and the hijackers’ murder of wheelchair-bound 69-year-old Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer. The opera has drawn controversy, including allegations by some (including Klinghoffer’s two daughters) that the opera is antisemitic and glorifies terrorism. The work’s creators and others have disputed these criticisms.
Musical Style: The music of John Adams is usually categorized as minimalist or post-minimalist although he has categorized himself as a ‘post-style’ composer. However Adams is not a strict follower of the movement. His writing is more developmental and directional, containing elements of Romanticism.
Adams experienced a musical epiphany after reading John Cage’s book Silence (1973) in which Cage posed fundamental questions about what music was. Cage regarded all types of sounds as viable sources of music. (See video by Cage in Topic titled Cage in this module). This perspective offered to Adams a liberating alternative to the highly disciplined techniques of serialism. At this point Adams began to experiment with electronic music, and his experiences are reflected in the writing of Phrygian Gates (1977–78), in which the constant shifting between modules in Lydian mode and Phrygian mode refers to activating electronic gates rather than architectural ones. (see image below) Adams explained that working with synthesizers caused a “diatonic conversion,” a reversion to the belief that tonality was a force of nature.
Figure 2. John Adams, Phrygian Gates, mm 21–40 (1977) Notice the repetition of the short melodic patterns, a visual view of minimalist writing.
Some of Adams’s compositions are an amalgamation of different styles. One example is Grand Pianola Music (1981–82), a humorous piece that purposely draws its content from musical cliches. Adams professes his love of other genres other than classical music. His parents were jazz musicians. He has also listened to rock music, albeit only passively. Adams once claimed that originality wasn’t an urgent concern for him the way it was necessary for the minimalists. He compared his position to that of Gustav Mahler, J. S. Bach, and Johannes Brahms, who “were standing at the end of an era and were embracing the evolution that occurred over the previous thirty to fifty years.”
Violin Concerto, Mvt. III “Toccare”
Lilsten to this work – based upon the toccata, defined as a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered virtuoso passages generally emphasizing the dexterity of of the performer’s fingers (in this case these characteristics are transferred to the violin). The beginning is quite rhythmic and driven, 2:33 has primitive sound percussion sounds, 3:11 involves the orchestra and 3:55 projects the full orchestra sound.
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As you read this page on Short Ride in a Fast Machine, please pay attention both to the ways in which the piece exemplifies the principles of minimalism and the ways in which it expands on those principles (note the references to “post-minimalism”). One of the main elements in this piece is rhythm, in particular the repeated beat played by the woodblock. Note in that section that Adams plays other rhythmic patterns against that beat that shift the listener’s sense of pulse.
Rhythmic Devices
In terms of rhythm, this work follows in the main precepts of minimalism, which focus on repeated material, generally in the form of ostinati. There is also a strong sense of pulse, which Adams heavily enforces in Short Ride in a Fast Machine in his scoring of the wood block. Adams claims that “I need to experience that fundamental “tick” of the wood block in his work. Throughout the course of the work, Adams experiments with the idea of rhythmic dissonance as material begins to appear, initially in the trumpets, and gravitates to a new sense of pulse. As shown below, the manifestation of rhythmic dissonance is akin to Adams’s method of creating harmonic dissonance as he adds conflicting rhythms to disrupt the metronomic stability of the wood block. Adams himself admits that he seeks to “enrich the experience of perceiving the way that time is divided” within his works. Later in the work, Adams introduces a simple polyrhythm as a means of initiating a new section that contrasts the rhythmic dissonance of the first section.
Example 1. Initial rhythmic dissonance
Example 2. Development of rhythmic dissonance
Example 3. Result of rhythmic dissonance
